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December 4, 2025

Paramount Skydance Corporation Doubles Proposed Breakup Fee to Acquire Warner Bros.
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In media news, the Paramount Skydance Corporation has more than doubled
the proposed breakup fee in its offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery,
as it seeks to outbid rivals looking to acquire the media conglomerate.
The proposed merger comes just months after Skydance completed its
acquisition of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, and after Paramount
agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President
Trump, who objected to how "60 Minutes" edited an interview with Kamala
Harris. Paramount board chair and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone
reportedly sought the settlement to ensure the FCC approved Paramount's
merger. On Wednesday, Redstone defended the settlement during the
Reuters NEXT summit in New York City.

Shari Redstone: "I do believe it was the right decision. I think the
trial had been set for two years out. The chaos that would have been
created over the next two years, I'm not sure the company could have
survived, the internal distractions, the external distractions, in spite
of everything that we were doing in the company. And during those months
we became the number four streaming service. Nobody was talking about
that. All people were talking about was the, you know, distraction of
the Trump litigation."



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